NON-PLACES:
Negotiating place is stretched out in time and space. Gathering a group
of curators and artists the project has two aims. It deals with the
notion of place vis-à-vis non-place, as it has been understood
and used in the discourse of cultural theory parallel to the
technocratic formation of western social apparatus. And in a
process-based way it tries to find alternative working models for
artistic production.
NON-PLACES is using the field of the art world, our common denominator,
as a starting point, investigating whether the notion of non-place and
its counterparts in the realm of today are productive while thinking
around space, one of the fundamental parameters of human life.
With exhibitions and discussions, both public and closed, being held in
Ufa, Russia 2005, and Gothenburg, Sweden 2006, the project is now a
part of Belef, Belgrade Summer Festival, Serbia 2007. Within Belef the
project opens up for reflection on how the intimacy of the particular
is negotiated within the larger framework of the general.
www.belef.org
Artists/NON-PLACES: Kalle Brolin, Marina Ivashenko, Charlotte Karlsson,
Sveta Menshikova, Petar Mirkovic, Milena Putnic, Maxim Rusakov &
Pia Sandström. Curators: Dina Bulavina, Maja Ciric & Camilla
Larsson.
Publication will be released autumn 2007, for more info
larsson.camilla<at>gmail.com
Camilla Larsson, Curator
2007-06-05
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Art as production of space
Non-place and the negotiating of place
A curator’s work for me is about creating not only contact surfaces
between art and its audience in the format of exhibitions but also to
be an active part in the production of art and work in close
collaboration with artists. This is the main reason why I got myself
involved in the on-going project of Non-Places that is now half way to
be finished, at least the parts we have so far planned. I have added
the subtitle “negotiating place” to underline this collaboratively
process; since we are not only looking at different ways of
theoretically as well as artistically dealing with the theme, but also
creating a common space in between us within the project. A space where
we try to find a way to communicate and work parallel to the main
routes of art institutions and the conventional ways of
communicating.
In the following text I will sketch a presentation of some of my
sources of inspiration. This I hope will serve as a start for a more
intense discussion that will lay the ground for the third exhibition in
Belgrade. The exhibition is, so far, planned to evolve around a
selection of certain places in Belgrade that at first sight are
characterized by their loss of place-like qualities; refugee houses
built on the roof tops of existing buildings and houses damaged in the
different wars. How do people living in Belgrade deal with these spots?
And are we here faced with places or rather non-places and what do
these categories imply? The places make the city appear as a palimpsest
as its layers of built structures are being exposed (by cuts and ruins
in the cityscape) or juxtaposed (planned architecture against temporary
constructions).
After the critic of the Modernist idea of the arts as a universal
entity relating to its own system of logic we are faced with various
attempts to create another kind of art, often rooted in place and
actual situation. In this development we can gather branches as the
Land art or artists who were trying to expose how the use of space was
a question of use and abuse of power. Such as the institutional critic
represented largely by the Conceptual artists of the 60´s and
70´s whom
directed their focus on the formation of the art system and its
universal norms and codes. Robert Smithson serves as paradigmatic
example developing an artistic oeuvre dealing with dialectical pairs
such as nature/culture, language as material, space and time, monuments
and the anti-monuments, displacement and landmark.1
Entropy
was a recurrent theme which incorporated ideas on decay and renewal,
chaos and order. With his famous earthworks he tried to create
monuments that only existed in the present and in relation to places
far away from any official historically sanctified context. His actual
acts/works of art function as a vital negotiating of both place and
ideas.
Grounded in the ideas of Marxism the French sociologist Henri Lefebvre
can be used as a relevant guide coining the notion appropriated space.
A category that takes Marx’s critique of the capitalist division of
private and public property as a departing point and expose how space
is produced. And additionally how this production has become the issue
exclusively for politically steered city planning. A political system
based on the capitalist view on society. When Marx on one hand analysed
space in more abstract terms, Lefebvre on the other hand looked into
the detailed and specific qualities of space and the production of
space. Taking into account not only the large scale structures and
organisation of the system of the nation state but equally valuing
everyday practice and rituals of the vernacular. Two different spaces
were singled out by him; the dominated space, rigorously planned in
before hand, and the appropriated space, where individuals are creating
their own spaces in various ways. Following these thoughts Meike
Schalk, architect and researcher at SLU in Alnarp, Sweden, arguing that
contemporary art and activist projects could serve as examples of
liable appropriation (ansvarstagande appropriering) of space.2
Projects that serve as temporary sources of inspiration because they
act out and make visible the inherently contradictory production of
space. Schalk is mentioning the work of the artist group Raketa as well
as the art duo called Hållplats.
As Marc Augé discussing the dilemmas of today’s anthropology
using the
notion non-place he is pinpointing the need for understanding and
creating knowledge around contemporary living. He asks how we
understand these certain places where no organic life can be rooted and
where individuals are wrongly treated as a homogenous group. Places
that bear no marks of place-like qualities. Augés problem of
finding
real meaning in these places and searching for specific features
defining place serves as a refreshing reminder exposing the logic
behind the construction of space that is based on preconceived ideas.
Is it relevant to ask for this kind of meaning anymore? Wouldn’t it
rather be more relevant to look for meaning based on the particular and
singularity of specific sites and situations, such as the above
mentioned artist groups?
As early as the 1950´s the American writer Jane Jacobs started to
formulate her critic against the monolithic ideas of the Modernist
separation of different functions.3 She wisely noted
that
where actual changes could take place was on the borders between these
zones. Borders which at a first glance appear to hold nothing but waste
and lost souls. (Thinking about John Steinbeck’s lively description on
Canary Row in the book with the same title). This belief in the
potential of the in between spaces has more and more frequently been
used in contemporary thinking and art practice, because of its
productive and revealing qualities. In between spaces that resist to be
defined and therefore make room for another kind of life to grow.
Jacobs looked at urban spaces such as the pavement, parks, and living
areas always searching for ways of implementing spaces unspecified and
open for the diversity of the individuals inhabiting the space.
During the summer 2006 the project Soft Sites has been running at ICA
Philadelphia. Included are art works dealing with the phenomena of
highlighting and preserving locations that have been objects for tragic
disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and terrorist attacks.
According to the website the projects involves art works taking into
account the “intangible qualities of location- history, desire,
identity, culture and sense of time”.4 Could “soft
site” be
a productive category to be used in our discussion? A notion defining
places that yet haven’t been subjects for organised collective memorial
and occupied by monuments, but still are standing for something larger
than themselves.
The Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben argues in a similar way in Coming
Community when he’s pointing out that where actual change ever will be
realised is on the thin line between the thing and itself.5
“Where a silver lining occur, where the state is vibrating, shimmering,
and is found in an extreme singularity”6 . The thing when
it’s neither
essence nor universal, but rather beyond categorization. These borders
are we looking for.
Camilla Larsson
Stockholm 2006-09-25
1
Http://www.robertsmithson.com
2 Meike Schalk ”Konfliktens platser” in
Hjärnstorm #87 2006, p 8-13.
3 Jesper Meijling ”Uppdrag: staden” in Arkitektur #3
2006, p 37-41.
4
Http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/past/softsites.php
5 Coming Community by Giorgio Agamben, 1993.
6 Hito Steyerl ”Euroscapes” in Hjärnstorm #87
2006, p 46-52.
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Exploration
Visit Belgrade for the visual art project:
NON-PLACES
Negotiating place
Project description
Artist and art administrators, such as curators and critics, are
categories of people living and working in the specific spaces of
today’s society, which has served as the foundation of the notion of
supermodernity. Supermodernity, coined by the French anthropologist
Marc Augé, is describing and defining the characteristic of our
western world, pinpointing what divide today from yesterday in terms of
spatial formation and meaning imposed on space.
Non-places are defined by Augé in various ways; one example is
that they are transitory, connecting individuals in a uniform manner,
where no organic social life is possible. They are argued to be the
result of excess and overabundance of time, of place and of
individuality. Airports, railway stations, hotels, refugee camps,
motorways, shopping centres, housing estates in the peripheries serve
as relevant examples.
On the contrary one effect of this highly designed, functionalised and
compartmentalized society is areas not designed at all, but rather gaps
of space in between the designed places. These non-designed
places, such as back yards, waste lands etc, inherit the same lack of
qualities as the non-places described by Augé. Places those are
not available at all in that sense that they can not bear any organic
life. These places are seldom inscribed in the representational models
of the bureaucratic machinery such as city plans, since they have no
monetary or commercial value, and therefore they don’t even have the
status of existing.
The notion of non-places will be used as points of progress in
countries such as Serbia and Montenegro or the Russian federation. We
will also interpret them as referential points which are denominating
the change of ideological paradigms. Non-place do not refer to
individuals as emotional beings in Sweden or Western Europe. However,
it should be noted that due to the multiplicity of choices, contexts,
practices, theories and flows every interpretation of the contemporary
society’s phenomenon would have to suffer from a constant lack of
finality. Instead of defining and generalizing a non-place, we are
about to represent the versatility of experiences it provokes.
Unless we value these places, the ones designed or not designed, as
“good or bad”, living in this societal stage of supermodernity, we are
using various strategies for coping with non-places. As follows in the
realm of the artistic field various ways of depicting and dealing with
these particular spaces are being adopted. The need for meaning is
increasing as non-places as such are increasing.
Considering the way most part of the globally expanding art world of
today has developed, as artist and art administrators we are constantly
travelling, constantly involved in projects in new spaces and they are
often seen as experts entrusted to deal with the production of meaning
on different levels. In this peculiar case the production of meaning
and knowledge of space. What could we then say about this current state
of affairs? What perspective could the artistic field bring into the
discussion regarding the creation of space?
By using the arena of the art world, that we all have in common, we are
aiming at investigating whether the theoretical notion of non-place and
its counterparts in the realm of today’s culture are adequate and
productive ways of dealing with space, which is one of the most basic
parameters of human life. The project also aims to gather versatile
artistic presentations of the non-place concept.
Using discussions within the group, inviting external interlocutors and
expressing our own interest artistically and theoretically in the shape
of a project moving from different spaces, that is spaces situated in
different geographical areas as well as different sort of art
institutions, we would like to be able to both expand our own field of
knowledge and interest. With the presentations, exhibitions and
conferences we are about to bring to the surface as many statements as
possible that were inspired by this phenomenon. Later on, the collected
material is supposed to be analyzed in order to give us some
evidence-based statements of the contemporary society.
Preliminary Time table
Summer 2006 Internal discussion within the project group, developmental
and construction phase
Autumn 2006 Research trip to Belgrade, meeting with curators/artists,
the core of the project will be discussed within the group and with
relevant persons on site, developmental and construction phase (This
application; support Prepatory Visit from Step Beyond)
Spring – summer 2007 Exhibition in Belgrade by invitation
2007 – 2008 The project proceed
Working structure
Non-Places is a project divided into three parts bringing artists and
curators from Sweden, Russia and Serbia-Montenegro. Every part has its
own form of presentation but are brought together by the common concept
and working process. The project is in its initial phase and is lead by
both artists and curators.
The project brings together artists from three different nations to
work with the notion of non-place which is imbedded in the discourse of
the place/space. The aim is to deal with the notion collaboratively
within the group and also with invited interlocutors such as
theoreticians and writers during the process of the project.
Non-places will provide the participants with a longer time frame than
the more conventional exhibition offers and is also focusing on the
group dynamic created by the constant discussions, the open and
non-hierarchical relations within the group, and the cumulative
relation between the three different parts of the project.
Maja Ciric
Belgrade August 2006
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